The fact that the guy is "Bush's own choice" somehow makes it meaningful? You really believe that? Just how abysmally stupid do you have to be before the left will take you in?

The truth of a statement isn't much affected by who said it, nor by who appointed him. Appealing to authority is a fallacy. I'm sure you think it's a good idea anyhow because all the people you most respect do it all the time, but that, you see, once again...

"[S]ome great reporting takes place in the blogosphere ... [but] the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed — especially people ... who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable."

I feel compelled to add that it's not the "feminist" blogosphere, per se, that's the problem: it's the leftosphere generally. I reject the desire by liberal feminists to assert sole ownership over feminism, and I reject the premise that the disease reflected in conditions like ADS and the reactions to Ryan's comments is anything to do with feminism rather than liberalism.

Some of you commenters seem to think I control Politico. I don't. I'm just linking because it relates to me. The "dustup" question wasn't my idea, but when it was asked, I didn't think of lying. The only reason that was the biggest dustup is because so many people attacked me. They could have ignored me. They decided to make a whole blog swarm out of it.

It's not like I wanted that or enjoyed it or went looking for ways to bring it up again. I didn't. They could have ignored Politico too, but they made a big deal about it, surprising Ryan, and he seemed to feel he should respond. Hence the chat.

I am not looking for a fight. But I will stand my ground. And I know a push back when I see it. I will not be pushed back. (Certainly not by the lame comments here!) I stand by my original observation about the photograph, the use of sexual imagery on the Feministing blog, and my position that feminists should not be cozying up to Bill Clinton.

My problem is that you call yourself a moderate femenist, when you're neither.

You have subscribed, either explicit or implicitly, to the most authoritarian and extremist policies of this administration, all "because of 9/11." You are, an "extremist," in this regard. There's no way around that. The fact that you don't hate gays and call yourself a feminist does not temper this extremism and make you moderate. So stop calling yourself a moderate.

Once you do this and stop saying stupid things like Padilla was blinded to keep him from blinking code to terrorists, or that Valenti somehow was using her breasts to attract Clinton's attention, then I'll stop wasting my time commenting on your blog.

This stuff still astonishes me First, all the commenters at Politico that jumped to defend Valenti, again. Did she even need defending in the first place?I guess. It was only nine months ago, after all.I just thought it was pretty funny, at the time. [I may have been in the minority.] How many of us have been in that situation with a photographer going 'ok you, turn left a little, you step in closer, now lean...' I'm sure that's what was really going on. Hey, maybe the photog was a Rove plant, eh? And you played right into his hands, Ann. Way to go.

Actually, there is a question I'd like to ask Ann (and I'm being the kinder, gentler version of vrse-- I do see a lot of reasoned thought by Ann, but I have trouble with this one):

In continuing to support the Iraq war, you are in effect supporting the opposite of feminism. Women in Iraq today are governed by a constitution that says right up front that 'sharia shall be a source of law,' and it has been already in terms of restricting the rights of women in matters like divorce, inheritance and custody so that they no longer have equal legal rights with men (which they did actually have under the brutal, but secular regime of Saddam.) We even saw recently the horrific stoning to death of a teenage girl in what is supposed to be the most 'peaceful' and 'advanced' region of Iraq (Kurdistan) as the Iraqi police just stood by and watched.

A 'success' would presumably be a stable Iraq under the same fundamentalist dominated government that is there now, and which has already legally restricted the rights of women.

So how (other than the really defeatist argument that the fundamentalists on the other side would be no better-- which I concede readily) do you square support of the Bush Iraq policy with feminism?

Fen said..."I love how the Left has little brownshirts trolling the net checking in on Dems like Ann, making sure she toes the party line. Even worse, that our own Lefty commenters don't have the balls to call them on it."

Aptly put. I hope you drop in on that Politico chat tomorrow. You're absolutely right here. You'd think at some point it would sink in that the disciplining doesn't work on me.

Eli: He didn't say all lefties. And I don't delete everything I think is bad. It takes time to delete things, but in any case, I want debate. Some of the hostile stuff isn't particularly good debate, but it kind of makes its own argument against itself.

I did however submit the question about Iraq and feminism, because that one has always been in my mind one of the great contradictions-- how any feminist could support the kind of government we see over there now.

Eli--You pose a question that is interesting, and I don't think I have seen it asked before. Certainly the good prof can answer for herself, but a couple of thoughts: You are assuming that Iraq will end up resembling one of the more fundamentalist Arab states, which I agree are antithetical to feminism. Certainly that's possible, but Iraq does have a history of secularism and that might very well trump fundamentalism. Neither of us know. The well publicized stoning in Kurdistan was certainly not a routine feature as in, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and was confined to a rather obscure fundamentalist sect.

As to what I see as the larger point, do you believe that "feminism," however defined, is even possible under what you describe as a brutal, secular rregime? I don't think it is, personally, but even if it is, it may be a situation wherein you have to select the lesser of two evils.

Thanks, Roger. First, I never advocated for the war. I wasn't blogging when it started, and I have never taken a position about whether it was right. Do people realize that? I didn't vote for Bush in 2000. I have always only been writing about what to do now that it has been started. I hate the idea of Iraq becoming a fundamentalist country in which women are oppressed. I see that as one more reason not to abandon our responsibilities. I'd like to know how feminists who want us to declare defeat and leave deal with this problem.

You'd think at some point it would sink in that the disciplining doesn't work on me.

Well, while I'm sorry it happens to you, I'm glad they show their true colors. They are a constant reminder to me of why I'm no longer on the Left, why they will always be my enemy: they are the same people who give a wink & a nod to fascist totalitarian states. The same people who are all of sudden concerned about the fate of Iraqi women.

[its not a bad question Eli, I just wish you would apply it to the rest of the women in the ME, and not when it conveniently supports your anti-war position.]

It is tempting to blame the U.S. presence in Iraq, but that would be wrong. This may have happened in Iraq, but the U.S. occupation has nothing to do with it (though the failure of local authorities to do anything about it is typical of what we've seen from Iraqi police and government officials.) For one thing, this sort of thing happens all the time, all over the middle east. Women or girls who even look at a man the wrong way can face the most severe punishment, including not only death by stoning but also by stabbing, beating with clubs, fists or rifle butts, burning to death, being boiled alive and pretty much any other unspeakably brutal way you can think of that a man or a group of men could kill a woman. As religious fundamentalism has spread in Iraq (not just Islamic-- these people were members of a cult opposed to Islam), so have age old, and truly monstrous traditions for 'dealing' with anything other than a 100% subservient, docile, cowering and obedient woman.

There is also this post in which I discussed people who were then making accusations similar to what you are saying here:

And I don't feel any differently about it today. And it isn't even logical that anyone on the left could feel any sympathy for a guy like Zarqawi even if he wasn't a murderer-- if he or those who think like him ever did succeed, they would create a feudal society where men are absolutely in control and girls have to drop out of school before junior high school so they can get married, where people are forced to pray several times per day and even the smallest moral transgression is punishable by such things as public flogging, amputation, or being stoned to death. Why would any of us Liberals feel sympathy for a guy who wants to create that kind of a society?

You may want to read what I've posted across the blogsphere before jumping to conclusions.